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Humoresques de concert, Op 14

Recordings

Philip Martin offers a delectable array of salon music at its finest, from household names such as Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Mendelssohn and Grieg to somewhat rarer gems from Tekla Badarzewska and Ethelbert Nevin.» More

Details

Few pianists have rivalled the celebrity of Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941). For decades, his name was synonymous with his instrument. Though many virtuosos then and now have far exceeded him in technique and his recordings betray a Romantic’s freedom with the written text, Paderewski exercised a fascination over his audience that bordered on the mesmeric. As a composer, few of his works have survived—his opera Manru enjoyed brief success as did his Piano Concerto—but nothing he wrote came remotely close to the popularity of his Minuet in G (there is another Paderewski minuet—in A major, No 7 of Miscellanea, Op 16—but this one in G major is the ‘Paderewski Minuet’).

In his memoirs, the composer gleefully relates how it was written as a joke. While staying in Warsaw he frequently played Mozart to two elderly friends. Having exhausted his Mozart repertoire, Paderewski decided to write something in the style of Mozart and see if it would be spotted. Having heard the half-improvised piece (without the cadenzas, which would be added later), Paderewski’s friends refused to believe that it had not been written by Mozart, still less that they had just heard a performance by its composer (the Minuet’s Schubertian references obviously escaped them). The friends forgave the prankster and, of course, thereafter always insisted that he plays his Minuet whenever he visited, a request repeated wherever Paderewski appeared for the remainder of his long career.

Its first concert performance was given by Anna Essipoff (1851–1914), the wife of Paderewski’s teacher Theodor Leschetizky, and it was through her championship that the piece by the then unknown Pole became widely known. Paderewski himself recorded his Minuet six times for the gramophone—in 1911, 1917, 1922–23 (two different takes appeared on HMV DB379), 1926 and 1937.